Page 85 of This Haunted Heart

“I’m having trouble getting out of bed,” I confessed groggily.

“I can see that,” she said, bathed in gilded light that glistened in her dark hair and made her fawn skin glow. “What’s the problem today?”

“Ghosts,” I told her, squinting into the brightness. She was an angel in a cream-colored dressing gown. A fallen one, because that gown was completely see-through in direct sunlight.

Rynn kicked off her slippers and climbed onto the bed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “There’s nothing really to say. I wish they’d go away. I know they won’t. I wish I could help them. I know I can’t help them all. Most of them have to help themselves. You see the problem?”

Rynn climbed to her feet on the bed and began to jump. She started gingerly, then added so much force she nearly knocked me off the mattress.

A chuckle rumbled in my chest. “What the devil are you doing?”

“I’m helping,” she said, grinning down at me with a smile brighter than the sunlight streaming in through the windows. “Come on and join me. It works! I promise. It’s impossible to wallow when you’re jumping on a bed.”

She reached a hand down, still bouncing like a hare, trying to coax me into being silly with her. I took her offered hand and tugged her down beside me. She hit the mattress and erupted into giggles. I appreciated that she wanted to cheer me up, but I had a few better ideas for how she might do just that.

I pulled her under the blankets with me, lifted her gown, and convinced her to try my way with my mouth between her thighs.

Chapter 20

Rynn Mavis

When I awoke the next morning, the vase on my mantle was full of purple sweet pea flowers—lathyrus odoratus, the goodbye bloom.

“Oh, Gertrude,” I said, touching a hand to my heart over my nightgown. “I’m glad he’s letting you go. I’m so happy for you.”

The room warmed, and the flowers vanished. Then dirty ditch water began to drip down the walls, catching in the empty vase.

I sighed. “I like it much better when you haunt the piano,” I told the nameless spirit that still got stuck in a pattern in my room every now and again. He’d find his way eventually, I was hopeful, but until then, I had to deal with soggy stockings every now and again.

I dressed and headed into the hall. Thecarpets were wet there too, so I was careful on the stairs. When Lochlan wasn’t in the dining room, I headed for the kitchen, to spend time with Martha.

Lochlan was there already, chopping vegetables at the table. The room was balmy and fragrant like a hot cake had been taken out of the oven recently.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Penance,” he said, and his lips quirked.

As I crossed to him, I felt a light veil brushing over my arm. The tender touch put a bittersweet ache in my chest because that touch hadn’t been a greeting. It was a farewell.

“Goodbye, sweet Martha,” I whispered. The room warmed like a loving hug, and then I felt her spirit depart.

* * *

Lochlan’s talk of penance had me thinking about my fortune again. He didn’t want my cash, and so I couldn’t decide what to do with it. Frankly, I no longer wanted it either. It felt tainted.

At first, it had felt tainted by the conniving ways in which I had at times earned that money, all the tricks and all my stealing. Then it felt tainted by all it represented, my habit of running away to flee my problems. My betrayal of Loch. The life I’d lived chasing trouble instead of staying with him like I’d truly wanted to. I once believed the only option for a woman like me was a life of trouble or submission to a master to rule over her. Now I knew there was something much superior to either of those things.

I wanted to live a life chasing after hope instead.

If I could show some pity to that horrible baron, then byGod, I most certainly could show a little toward myself. And if Lochlan could forgive me, then surely I could forgive myself. Those were my first steps toward chasing hope and getting the monster off my back finally.

I was the one who’d put the guilt there in the first place. Realizing the power I had over it made it a little easier to dig its talons out of me. I saw something different in myself now, but I still couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do with all that money.

It felt important to do something worthwhile with it, so I gathered it up and carried it in a wicker basket toward the weeping willow tree near the water gardens. I tucked it in beside the roots, and I sat there on my knees in the grass for a moment.

It was a bright spring morning. The sun warmed the ground and filled the air with that lovely green earthy scent that felt both homey and divine.

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